Summer Herbs and Fruits and Wildflowers in the Polyculture Veg Beds and Forest Garden. Week 14 - The Polyculture Project

Shifting down gears as we go into summer with plenty of observing, harvesting and eating the harvest this week. The gardens are doing an excellent job of turning light, carbon dioxide and water into food and we're doing a good job of appreciating that :)

But first just to let you know we've revamped our Online Store where you can find Forest Garden/ Permaculture Plants, Seeds, Cuttings, Bulbs, Rhizomes and Polyculture Multi-packs along with digital goods and services such as Online Courses, Webinars, eBooks, and Online Consultancy and finally we've added a Bulk Fruit and Nut Tree order form for Farms, Orchards, Nurseries, and Large Regenerative Landscape Projects. If there is anything in the store you would like to see but is not there, please let us know. We hope you enjoy the store and find something you like :) It's your purchases that keep our Project going. Thank you. Enter Our Store Here

Plants, Seeds, eBooks, Consultancy, Bulk Fruit and Nut Tree Orders for Permaculture, Polyculture, Forest Gardens and Regenerative Landscapes.

Market Garden

Walking around the gardens on a sunny summer morning following a night of heavy rain you can certainly sense the garden's will to grow. Symphytum x uplandicum - Comfrey with vegetables polycultures in the background 

The polyculture beds  

We're pleased to again be offering a modest selection of vegetables and fruits to Trustika Food co-op. Dylan is handling the orders this year and here he is picking pears for orders. 

Trustika is an excellent example of connecting food producers with consumers. The food co-op buying and selling takes place on an ingenious piece of database design using google sheets by Borislav Dimitrov who also manages the food co-op. Using their gmail accounts producers list, consumers order and everything is delivered to a central pick up point. Elegant :)     

Garden produce picked and ready for delivery 

Foeniculum vulgare - Fennel   planted on the perimeter of the polyculture beds. An excellent plant for beneficial insects and great kitchen herb too.

The green patch with various plants growing have emerged from a cow manure deposits that were put on this meadow outside our market garden during the winter. Amazing to see the variety of seeds that have germinated in the manure, including a number of squash plants that are running rampant.     

Forest Garden 

Possibly one of the hardiest figs on the planet was developed here in Bulgaria. A cultivar named 'Michurinska 10' is commonly grown here at altitudes above 1000 m elevation in areas that receive extreme winters lows of below -20. Here you can see the breba crop of figs already ripe by early July.

Check our blog posts all about figs here 

About 5 years ago I collected seed from the parent of the below plant standing proud in the glasshouse borders of RHS Wilsley Gardens in the UK. The borders were designed by one of my favorite garden creators Piet Oudolf. The plant is Glycyrrhiza yunnanensis -Yunnan Liquorice and this year it has flowered and set seed for the first time :)  I've not been able to confirm that the plant is edible, however, being a relative of Glycyrrhiza glabra the plant used to make Liquorice it may well be.  

Apple tree in the home forest garden is looking good this year 

Prunella vulgaris - Self-heal is one of favourite edible summer herbs. The young leaves and stems can be eaten raw in salads and the whole plant can be boiled and eaten These plants are perennial but in my experience never survive more than a few years. Gratefully, they self seed quite easily popping up in various spots in the gardens including the lawns.   

Morus alba - White Mulberry Still fruiting well into July. The fruits are larger and sweeter than the early ripening fruit

Young trees in the bionursery are doing well with all the rain and sunshine. Here we have classic bee trees  Tetradium danielii - Korean Bee Tree  and Albizia julibrissin - Silk tree with Symphytum x uplandicum - Comfrey

planted below.

Hibiscus syriacus - Rose of Sharon flowering. A great summer flowering shrub with edible flowers and very suitable for hedging. Another plant that will feature in our upcoming bee garden, Eudaimonia.  

Seed pods of  Lunaria rediviva - Perennial Honesty. Excellent bee plant for early spring. Another plant with edible relatives Lunaria annua - Annual honesty, but I cannot find any account that L.rediviva is edible. 

Wild  Saponaria officinalis - Soapwort in a field behind Ataraxia. I noticed a large number of Ladybirds - Coccinellidae on the plants 

    

Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course 

Want to learn how to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes?  Join us for our Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course from May 1st to Sep 13th, 2023. 

We're super excited about running the course and look forward to providing you with the confidence, inspiration, and opportunity to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes, gardens, and farms that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.

Regenerative Landscape Design Online Course

You can find out all about the course here and right now we have a 20% discount on the full enrollment fees. Just use the promo code RLD2023 in the section of the registration form to receive your discount. 

We are looking forward to providing you with this unique online learning experience - as far as we know, the very first of its kind. If you are thinking of reasons why you should do this course and whether this course is suitable for you, take a look here where we lay it all out. Looking forward to it!

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We offer a diversity of plants and seeds for permaculture, forest gardens and regenerative landscapes including a range of fruit and nut cultivars. We Deliver all over Europe from Nov - March. - Give a happy plant a happy home :)

Our Bio-Nursery - Permaculture/Polyculture/ Regenerative Landscape Plants 

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If you appreciate the work we are doing you can show your support in several ways.

• Make a purchase of plants or seeds from our Bionursery or Online Store 

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Design and Create Webinars - Forest Gardens, Urban Gardens, Permaculture, Regenerative Farming   

We're hosting a range of online learning sessions including how to create habitat to enhance biodiversity, how to design and build a forest garden, polyculture design software tutorials, regenerative farm, and landscape design, urban gardening and much more. If you would like to be notified when our next sessions are coming up please add your email below and hit subscribe and we'll be in touch.

You can also register for our online training, services, and products directly here.

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